Project 3 Progress

Actually, I am very busy this weekend so I am done with the draft of my project 3 paper. I was able to relate somewhere between 6-10 (if I remember correctly) of the authors that we have been reading about in class and also three other online sources. I feel that it is a good paper though there is room for some improvement. Once again, relating back to my last paper, does it matter if it flows?

Also, I was able to really relate to my own discourse community so I am glad I chose what I did. It really helped me realize what I have and what I don't want to lose. Writing this paper make me think back to my young self and think about just starting off with music. If it weren't for my dad pushing me in school to learn an instrument, I would not be where I am today. Overall, I am very grateful to be in such a loving discourse community; THE 110 OHIO UNIVERSITY DRUMLINE. Once a family, always a family.

Villanueva

Before You Read.

I feel that yes, I have considered myself to be an outsider at some points in my life. And yes, I have had to assert my religious background before.

Summary.

In this article, "Memoria is a Friend of Ours: On the Discourse of Color", Villanueva gives examples of authors who write about their memories and things being minorities. He also really just talks about race and whatnot and says how color can reflect on the author's memories. He also talk about communities and discourse.

Synthesis.

One person that can be related to this article is Porter. I say this because Porter talks about intertextuality and discourse communities. Also, Heilker and Yergeau because all people can be made fun of from different situations. Another person that can be related is Bryson. Bryson talks about force of habit that can be very difficult to break.

Response	Quotation
This was a connection with me because my grandpa speaks Spanish.	“Remember to call your grandpa abuelo. He'll like the sound of that, since none of my sister's kids have called him that” (171).
Everyone has different memories and things can be remembered differently between people. This just made me think of my personal memories.	“Memory simply cannot be adequately portrayed in the conventional discourse of the academy” (172).
I wasn't sure what I thought about this. I mean yes, clearly, it is true.	“Those of us who are light-skinned don't pass for white; we're just not automatically sorted into the appropriate slot” (174).
This made me think of how far we have come as a country. Also how racism still exists in our world today.	“Yet little things happen that betray the underlying racism that affects us all, no matter how appalled by racism we might be” (174).
I didn't really understand this and the more I read it, the more confused I get.	“I am these uneasy mixes of races that make for no race at all yet find themselves victim to racism” (176).
I am not sure what it is about this, but I really like it a lot. It made me stop and think about myself and what the future is holding for me.	“Looking back, we look ahead, and giving ourselves up to the looking back and the looking ahead, knowing the self, and, critically, knowing the self in relation to others, maybe we can be and instrument whereby students can hear the call” (176).

AE.

I didn't really get it so I Googled it. I got something kind of like, "improving oneself by one's own efforts". I think that a group always needs to stick together to survive in any given situation and stay strong with what they believe in.

Thoughts.

I guess I found this article interesting. The poems were something thrown in writing that I wasn't really used to seeing so that was kind of nice. This was a little boring though and dragged out too. Overall, discourse communities will always be around and everyone belongs in one no matter what they think.

Malinowitz

Before You Read.

I personally think that I am pretty familiar with the term lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. I do not need to Google them.

Summary.

Malinowitz basically talk about gays and lesbians fitting into their specific discourse communities. She personally thinks that gays and lesbians hide in fear from the world because we live in a homophobic world. She used a school teacher as an example to back up some of what she was saying. She also went into how we didn't allow women to vote and whatnot because we did not think they were mentally strong enough. Yes, that changed over time. Will the culture accept gays and lesbians just the same over time?

Synthesis.

I believe one person that can be related to this is Swales. I say this because Swales article deals with the six characteristics of a discourse community and gays and lesbians fit into this. A second person that can be related to this is Gee. I say this because Gee talks about being individual and gays and lesbians have to go through that. Finally, a third person to relate to this is Wardle. I say this because Wardle talks about how not to put down others based on ideas and that is definitely a major issue when it comes to gays and lesbians.

Response	Quotation
In the past few years, things have changed in the classroom because of gays and lesbians and the thoughts and actions behind them.	“In the last few years, there had been a subtle but persistent change in the classroom climate around the subject of sexual orientation” (110).
Because of what is going on in our society with gays and lesbians, this is what people are calling what state we are in now.	“We are now in what many activists, lobbyists, journalists, and profiteers have enthusiastically dubbed the “gay nineties” ” (111).
I don't believe this should have changed. It was fine the way it was before. Why change it?	“At the same time, the issue of gays in the military developed to the point where the mantra “Don't ask, don't tell” mandated the hypocrisy of silence as federal policy” (111).
I don't this is correct. This is an opinion and I think will just change everything for the worse.	“Creating an academic environment in which the complexities of lesbian and gay subjectivity can enter public discourse will, first of all, entail “outing” realms of experience, fear, feeling, and prejudice that have not been substantively dealt with in our classes and departments before” (112).
Yes, gays do live in fear. This is just saying how they can still be in fear within the classroom.	“I can hypothesize that the closeted gay students in my classes remain silent our of some of the same fears” (113).
I believe that this is another opinion and homophobia will never change/go away.	“Sexual identity is a component of personal and social identity highlighted for lesbians and gay men because homophobia in the culture makes it problematic” (124).

AE 2.

I am going to choose religion. I am Roman Catholic. We follow what it says in the Bible and we live by that. We also attend mass every weekend. I have not experienced that before and I understand what this question is trying to hint and I do not want to talk about that. The bottom line, it wasn't silenced and  everything is fine.

Thoughts.

Honestly, I did not really enjoy reading this at all. The reason I say this is because I am a Republican and I do not support gay rights. To be honest I skipped over some of the parts in the book because I didn't want to read it anymore. I would not read this again. It also didn't change my mind about anything.

Discourse Community Topic Proposal

For my discourse community I have chosen to focus on Music. To get more specific, I want to go into depth about drummers because I am one. This can be a very large community on its own because of the amount of different kinds of music that can be created by just drumming. I am apart of the Ohio University drum line and because of that I can interview some and get more information from others and not just from myself. I have been around drums my whole life and I really enjoy them so I hope that this will be a fun project.

Devitt

Before You Read.

I uses lots of different types of communication everyday. I do not have a smart phone but when I am at a computer I use Facebook. I also have my phone to talk and text on. Visual is with my phone and Facebook. Audible with programs like Skype, music, and my phone too.

Summary.

In Devitt's article, "Materiality and Genre in the Study of Discourse Communities", she basically argues that genres a combination of communities working together that are either specialized or non-specialized. She goes on to say how that can be a problem because the specialized and non-specialized people are different and have different lexis'. She also uses authors to prove her point.

Synthesis.

One person that can be related to this article is Porter. The reason I say this is because Porter discusses the intertextuality and community that all people come from which is related to discourse communities. A second person that can be related to this is Swales. The reason I say this is because the main focus around his article is are discourse communities and how people need to learn how to adapt to new situations. A third person that can be related to this article is Gee. The reason I say this is because Gee believed in the idea of singularity in a community.

Response	Quotation
Discourse communities will always be around and popular even if you do not know of them.	“Over the past two decades the concept of discourse community has been one of the most hotly contested notions in the field, subject to the range of by now well-known critiques that claim it is too utopian, hegemonic, stable, and abstract” (98).
For teachers, the concept of discourse communities are limited.	“As a result, the concept of discourse community remains of limited pedagogical value” (98).
Teachers are still trying to teach students all about discourse communities. They are trying different techniques to do so.	“To make communities tangible and their discourse actions palpable to students, writing teachers have begun to use ethnographic research, which, while valuable in locating the study of discourse within the behaviors of real communities, can be difficult to implement in the classroom” (98).
Here, it is talking about the differences between specialists and non-specialists in discourse communities.	“Part of the difficulty when specialized communities write to nonspecialist users lies in technical language, a difficulty commonly recognized and often addressed through defining key terms, but most of the difficulty comes from differences of interest and value that definitions cannot control” (101).
This is talking about a group's social roles, actions and/or genres. All discourse communities have a certain type of genre.	“Ethnographic observation of a community that foregrounds genre analysis allows researchers to explore more fully the complexity of the group's social roles and actions, actions that constitute the community's repeated rhetorical strategies, or genres” (107).

MM.

Personally, I think that the best way to do research is through social interaction. Taking to people in person is much more personable and nice sometimes too.

Thoughts.

Honestly, I didn't really like this article. It was long and boring to read. Yes, I did learn some new things about discourse communities, but other than that, I wasn't too impressed. I did like how there were three different writers though and I was able to connect with some of the things that they said.

Wardle

Before You Read.

Honestly, it is funny now that I think about this. The reason I say this is because I actually am using phrases that we have learned in English that I haven't used before. Also, I am taking Italian and now i can say sentences that I would have never been able to before. And finally, I am using art terms that I didn't know before. Yes, college is a discourse community and it is where I belong.

Summary.

In Wardle's article, "Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces", she talks about the writer's identity when and through writing and in that person's workplace. She says that it takes a little bit of time to adapt or fit into new workplaces and because of that aren't themselves as much as they should be. She gave an example of how a person didn't fit in because they had to change workplaces and how it took time to adapt.

Synthesis.

One person that this article can be related to is McCloud because I saw that having a mask was necessary for some people to adapt into their new workplaces. A second person that can be related to this is Swales because in that article, it talks about finding a discourse community. Finally a third person that can be related to this article is Porter. Porter also talks about the discourse community which also goes along with what Wardle was saying.

Response	Quotation
To me this is saying that writing is more about just writing; there is a reason for writing. -To persuade people possibly.	“As composition widens its focus beyond academic writing, it is increasingly important to consider what it means to write in the workplace” (522).
We as people may not fully understand how different issues influences other's writing.	“While we recognize the importance of identity and authority issues in the process of enculturating new workers, we do not always fully understand how these issues influence their writing” (522).
We need to understand that workplaces are legitimate and serious work can get done there that can mean something to other people who read work.	“To tease out relationships between identity and writing in the workplace, we need theories that consider the workplace as a legitimate and important influence on subject formation” (522).
New workers need to feel like the belong after learning how to adapt to the new surroundings.	“To fully participate, according to Wenger, new workers must find ways to engage in the work that other community members do, including the writing they do; newcomers must be able to imagine their work-and writing- as being an important part of a larger enterprise” (524).
People know how to speak in different circumstances. Language can be seen very differently be everybody in this world and they can use it as they please even if it isn't the smartest thing to do.	“Conversely, a person can understand clearly how to speak in ways that are acceptable in particular circumstances, but if not endowed with some recognized institutional authority, all the relevant and appropriate words in the world will not command it: “authority comes to language from outside . . . Language at most represents this authority, manifests and symbolizes it” (Bourdieu 109).” (526).
	QD 4.

Personally, yes I do believe that language is usually chosen unconsciously. It really depends on the situation and the person. The reason I say that it can vary is because I do not think about every little thing I say before I do. You're brain would explode if you were processing that much information all of the time and it all just comes natural with time.

Thoughts.

This was a very interesting article. I didn't find it too boring or anything but I am not sure I would read it again. I was however able to learn some new things which I always like. There will always need to be adaption if life to survive.

Swales/Gee

Swales.

Before You Read.

One time I felt out of place was when my uncle took me to a gaming convention. There were so many people there who I thought were very weird and I just kind of felt like I could only connect with my uncle at that place and time.

Summary.

In Swales' "The Concept of Discourse Community", he basically just talks about what a discourse community actually is and compares/contrasts it from a speech community. He gives examples of what a discourse community is and talks about what he personally thinks about them too. Pretty much, if you want to learn what a discourse community is, read this article because it will explain a lot.

Synthesis. (3).

One person that Swales' article can be related to is Glenn's. The reason I say this is because both of these people's articles talk about discourse communities. A second person who can relate to this is Brandt. The reason is because both articles say or talk about something having to do with having sponsors. A third person that can be related to this article is Porter. Again, just like Glenn, Porter also talks about discourse communities.

QD 5.

I would say that the most simple and easiest to understand discourse community that I belong to is college. College by it's self can be a HUGE discourse community but in my case, I am going to break it down into my discourse community of my major; game design and animation. It's lexis can be things or other classes such as drawing, sculpture and computer design. There are a lot of genres involved in this major and they can overlap with more specific animation and game design ideas.

QD 6.

I tried playing in a ping pong club back from my home town. The people there were really different than I was and I just didn't seem to fit in all too well. Even though I was pretty good at playing, I just wasn't "the same" as the other people in the club. They were nice and all, but just not to my liking.

Thoughts.

After reading this I am not able to understand so much more about discourse communities. I will be able to use what I learned and it will help go towards my paper. He wasn't too forceful about what he was talking about so that was nice. And last, I would come back to this to read sometime because there is something to be learned here.

Gee.

Before You Read.

Mush fake: It stands for "prison slang for items owned by an inmate that may be legal to buy, but were constructed or obtained through illegal means, hence they are contraband". "Urban Dictionary Definition"

Summary.

In Gee's article, "Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction", he talks about mushfakes, metaknowledge, literacy and apprenticeship. He basically talks about discourse communities too and different views and interpretations of linguistics. The audience can be people who are in a discourse community and who want to learn more about them.

Synthesis. (3).

Two people right of of the bat that can be related to this article are Porter and Glenn. The reason I say this is because all three of these people talk about discourse communities and help people out who want to may want to learn more about them. A third person that can be related to this article is Pollan. The reason is because like Porter and Glenn,  Pollan also talks about discourse communities and how they affect the factory farm industry.

Response	Quotation
I like how he started off with saying what he was going to talk about and what his main points were. It gives the reader a nice heads-up.	“What I propose in the following papers, in the main, is a way of talking about literacy and linguistics” (482).
I like how he said this because language can be so different and yet confusing at sometimes because of grammar. Grammar can change a lot when it is involved with language.	““Language” is a misleading term; it too ofter suggests “grammar.”” (483).
I like this quote in a way. I think that this is important in anyone's life no matter what it is involving.	“It is not just what you say, but how you say it” (483).
I like this because he is saying that the discourse community that you belong in is kind of who you are and what you like to do is all around you.	“A Discourse is a sort of “identity kit” which comes complete with the appropriate costume and instructions on how to act, talk, and often write, so as to take on a particular role that others will recognize” (484).
This was funny to me because I was able to see that literacy can mean something different to every single person in this world.	“My definition of “literacy” may seem innocuous, at least to someone already convinced that decontextualized views of print are meaningless” (487).
M.M.

I feel that yes, after reading this article by Gee, I am no able to understand my own and other people's experiences a little differently. I can now see what kind of people there are in other discourse communities and can maybe understand why they are there. It is still somewhat judging, but I can understand why more now.

Thoughts.

I think that this was very helpful, for the most part. I was able to learn more about discourse communities and some of that can help me with my paper. One thing that got boring to me was reading it. It just wasn't anything really exciting and I lost interest quickly. Overall, I did learn something, So it wasn't the biggest waste of time I guess.

Compare/Contrast.

Actually, these two articles by Gee and Swales are very similar. The reason I say this is because both mainly focus on discourse communities. They both go into detail about how they feel about them and what they think about them too. Not only do they say their personal feelings, but they also share what it really takes to be in one. Both of these articles are pointed at the same kind of audience and with that, say how it can affect the people that are in certain discourse communities.
     
      Although these articles are very similar, they are also very different. Swales mainly focuses on the certain and specific characteristics or traits of a discourse community. Gee focuses on how the language and literacy of a person can affect what discourse community a person is in. Both of the styles of writing are also different in these two articles because each and every person in this world has their own voice in writing.